Hiring manager intake form

Why the intake meeting decides the search

Most slow or failed searches can be traced back to a weak kickoff. The recruiter leaves with a job description and a vague "find me someone great", sources against the wrong profile for three weeks, and only then learns that the manager wanted a different background entirely. A structured intake form prevents that by making the hiring manager commit, in writing, to what they want and how they will decide.

The job requisition form tells you the role is approved. The intake form tells you who to look for and how they will be judged. If the job description template for this role is out of date, the intake meeting is the moment to fix it, before it is turned into an ad.

The questions that matter most

Some intake questions are logistics. A few change the search:

• What must this person deliver in 90 days? It turns a list of skills into a picture of the job and gives you something to sell to candidates.
• What does excellent look like compared with average? This is where the real selection criteria come out. "Our best collectors stay calm and keep the customer talking" is more useful than "3 years of collections experience".
• Why did the last person leave? If three people have quit in a year, you need to know whether it is the schedule, the manager or the pay before you hire a fourth.
• Which backgrounds would you consider that are not obvious? Adjacent profiles, such as hospitality workers for customer service roles, often widen the pool more than any job board.

Ask for two or three real profiles or past hires the manager considers a strong fit. Calibrating on real examples saves more time than any amount of discussion about adjectives.

Agree the interview plan before the first candidate

Decide stages, interviewers and the competency each interviewer owns during intake. Without that, interviewers improvise, ask overlapping questions and score on gut feel. Our interview plan template covers the detail, but the intake form should at least name who interviews, in what order and who makes the final call.

Also agree screening criteria that can be applied consistently. Knockout questions should be job-related and applied to every applicant the same way, both for fairness and because inconsistent screening is a common source of discrimination claims.

Service levels on both sides

Recruiters usually commit to timelines. Hiring managers rarely do, and their delays are often the longest in the process. Write both down. Typical targets: recruiter presents a first slate within 5 business days, the manager reviews submitted profiles within 2 business days, and interviewers submit feedback within 24 hours.

In high-volume hiring, the service level that matters most is speed from application to first conversation. Hourly candidates often accept the first reasonable offer, so a process that takes ten days to call someone back loses people to the employer down the street. If you run intake for many sites, a shared digital intake form lets site managers complete it ahead of time, so the meeting becomes a 15-minute review instead of a 45-minute interview.

Common mistakes

• Treating intake as optional for repeat roles. The role may be the same; the manager, market or pay may not.
• Accepting ten must-haves. Push back until there are five or fewer.
• Recording deal-breakers that are not job-related, such as "no job hoppers" or age-coded preferences. Challenge these in the meeting.
• Skipping compensation. If the range will not attract the profile described, say so now with data from your applicant flow or market data.
• Never revisiting the form. Recalibrate after the first handful of candidates; that is when the real profile usually becomes clear.